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March 19, 2019 12:54 PM UTC

Minority Leader, "Recall Director"--Now THAT'S Statesmanship

  • 14 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
House Minority Leader Patrick Neville (R-Castle Rock)

Here’s the email blast that went out at 10:00AM from House Minority Leader Patrick Neville, writing in his alternate capacity as the newly-minted “Director” of Recall Colorado–an organization Neville is as of now fundraising for under the family’s Values First Colorado PAC to initiate recall elections against fellow House members:

From: “Rep. Patrick Neville” <director@recallcolorado.org>
Date: March 19, 2019 at 10:01:48 AM MDT
Subject: Democrats overreaching again
Reply-To: director@recallcolorado.org

Democrats in the General Assembly are rolling out an agenda that spits in the face of our Colorado values.

From undermining our ability to choose our President, to an unconstitutional gun grab, to indoctrinating students against parents’ wishes, Democrats are forcing overreaching legislation despite widespread opposition by Coloradans like you.

We’re launching a statewide effort to recall some of the worst Democrat offenders, and your support will be critical to ensuring our elected officials respect the will of the voters.

Will you help launch these recall efforts by chipping in $10, $25, $50 or even more today?

As you can see, Minority Leader Neville is dispensing with any pretense of separation between himself and his recall committee, presumably staffed and operated by the Neville family’s in-house political consultant firm Rearden Strategic. This would seem to be a deliberate choice, since either Neville’s father ex-Sen. Tim Neville or brother and longtime Rocky Mountain Gun Owners organizer Joe Neville could have served as the figurehead of the recall front group. It represents a significant departure from then-Senate Minority Leader Bill Cadman’s standoff support for the recalls in 2013.

It should go without saying the House Minority Leader taking a director role in a campaign to recall majority Democrats from office is a severe blow to whatever sense of bipartisan comity that may have existed this session. The situation is further complicated by negative press the Nevilles received over their management of House GOP “independent expenditure” efforts this last year, which ended in electoral disaster and hundreds of thousands of dollars anomalously left unspent. Charging headlong into a recall campaign might temporarily deflect questions about their mismanagement in 2018. But will any of the state’s GOP powerbrokers be willing to invest again?

Whatever happens next, what we have here is proof positive that the House minority under Patrick Neville isn’t serious about governing. If Minority Leader Neville wants to personally run a recall campaign against his House colleagues in the middle of a legislative session, he should resign first, at least from leadership–and then perhaps consider why so many fellow Republicans would be happy to see him go.

Comments

14 thoughts on “Minority Leader, “Recall Director”–Now THAT’S Statesmanship

  1. There's no bipartisanship because Democrats are jamming their socialist agenda through no matter what. I'm with Pat Neville, fuck these guys. Democrats can't be negotiated with, they must be defeated by any means necessary.

    1. You lost because your candidates suck.  Your party sucks.  Your platform sucks.

      You guys are sore losers that can't take getting your asses handed to you, so you try to rig the game. 

    2. Sorry Patrick, but .  . . 

      I'm with Pat Neville . . . 

      . . . you’ve just received your official kiss of political death.

      PS.  You deserve it!

    1. Go for broke.  Go after as many as possible.  Target Boy Neville and make him the avatar of all the Republican bullshit we want no part of anymore.

  2. Hi.  I'm Patrick "Boy" Neville.  I'm an overgrown man child that got made Republican minority leader thanks to my now deposed Daddy and his RMGO buddies.  Under my "leadership", I cost us 5 seats in the house and helped pave the way for the largest Democratic House Majority in modern times.  But RMGO still wants me in place because I'm a butthurt sore loser who will try to recreate 2013 Recalls, because it's the only way I have a prayer of winning in this state.

  3. The assumptions behind Rep. Neville's recall effort reflects his lack of knowledge about representative government, his political blindness rooted in ideological rigidity, and above all, his disrespect and contempt for the voters of Colorado. 

    Representative government is rooted in the belief that we elect our representatives to conduct our public business, in this case our legislative business, for a term of years.  If we disagree with how those individuals conduct themselves, we elect someone else at the next election.  Recall, like impeachment of the executive, is reserved for extraordinary circumstances.  Although legally available, it should not become the norm and certainly should not be turned to every time there is a policy difference over legislation.  If Rep. Neville doesn't like the legislation that is enacted, he can challenge it in court, initiate a measure to the ballot, or campaign against the opposition party in the next election.

    Its also disingenuous and arrogant to say there is "widespread opposition" to the legislation the Democrats are promoting and enacting.  Most of the legislation, at least in principle, was discussed in the 2018 campaign and yet, the Democrats won in a landslide in the state House and Senate.  His ideological rigidity prevents him from recognizing the fact his policy preferences simply don't have majority support at the moment, either in the legislature or among the voters.

    Above all, his recall effort represents his contempt and disrespect for the voters of Colorado.  The Republicans campaigned and lost the 2018 election.  Whether a particular piece of legislation is unconstitutional or against the wishes of the voters will be decided by the courts and the voters.  I suspect he realizes the Republican Party of Colorado represents an ever shrinking minority of our voting population and the only way he can elect more Republican legislators is through a recall election where a small number of voters turnout.      

    1. The problem of using recalls to game the system could be solved by changing the law or constitution to require a minimum number of yes votes to be at least 50% of the total votes cast for all candidates for that office in the last election. No recalls due to a minority of voters who are more angry than the majority who think things are fine.

      There are always problems or loopholes in any set of rules, but clearly this one needs to be cleaned up.

  4. Time to update the state constitution to explicitly state "losing an election" and "passing legislation you don't agree with" are not valid nor legal reasons for recall. 

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